


The long way home

by dinner_sbd



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-09-25 21:40:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20378542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinner_sbd/pseuds/dinner_sbd
Summary: When Shikako is sent to bring Sasuke soup, she decides to stay and help with a project he's working on.





	The long way home

> I was never one to want to  
Put my trust in someone else completely  
And I was always one to want to up and run  
When someone said they needed me
> 
> But you...  
You could be the one  
Yeah, you could be the one  
Carly Rae Jepsen

**Take the long way home**

The Uchiha district has high walls, it keeps its past hidden in empty houses and narrow streets. Winds howl here in a high pitch that makes the trees shiver and cry with red falling leafs. Under my feet fallen twigs snap almost melodically. Autumn had come and with it nature seemed to match the setting perfectly. It was as if the district knew that I was there. That I could’ve done something if I had been motivated enough to do so. A guilt trip on every corner.

I walked the narrow streets, my face as haunted as the district itself, and if I took the long way around it was because some places I had seen over and over and over. And If I stared at a window a moment too long it was penance. But I was here to talk to the last Uchiha of Konoha. The rest was just scars from memories not my own.

Sasuke lived in the same place as he had been born. It was the only home in a cemetery of houses.

I hesitated before knocking his door. Would I tell him about everything today? The words were already on my lips, it’d be easy. ‘I knew they would die, and did nothing.’ The door snapped open as my dark doubts closed off. Heavy scented air nearly knocked me out.

“We have a mission?”

I nodded “We’re supposed to turn in tomorrow morning.” Sasuke looked hot, as in warm, like he had been in the sauna all morning. His hair damp and tucked behind his ears, fingers covered in white spots that shimmered in the light.  
“Mom sent me with soup” I held up my hands and a bowl softly fell out of hammerspace landing in my hands. It was still warm. “She said you were probably to busy to think of eating?”

I made it obvious I was giving him a glance over.

He just raised his shoulders.

Sasuke closed the door behind me as I got in. The living room was a mess, there were boxes of incense and rolls of paper everywhere. In front of the couch a cast iron cauldron with warm wax steadily fumed the entire room. “Want me to put it in the kitchen?”

Sasuke looked at the pile of things where his table used to be. It was mostly candles and paint now. “Thanks.” He answered. “Sorry for the mess.”

I walked to the kitchen, Sasuke a step behind me, the kitchen was a much better representation of what Sasuke’s place usually looked like. Neat and clean. I put the ceramic bowl on the stove. “It’s ok. Reminds me of my room when TenTen and I started to work on our seals. But what are you doing with all of this… stuff?”

Sasuke used two hands to go through his hair, shaking it loose. Strands of it fell in front of his face, I never quite understood why he liked that style so much, it wasn’t comfortable. I suspected he thought it looked cool, or maybe because it framed his face so that it was nigh impossible to miss his eyes, which seemed more likely, the Sharingan was one of Sasuke’s more useful tools after all. “My mom taught me how to make these.”  
He said it so softly, timidly. It was almost like we were seven years back, and Sasuke was half his age. “And I missed the anniversary because of… well you know.”

I did know. Red team had been going on missions a lot, and Sasuke and I took a lot of missions to cover that up too. It looked like a lot of work for one person. “If you’d like.” I offered “You could teach me, so I can help.”

Sasuke gave me a thankful nod and started to explain how he went about making floating lanterns. That afternoon we made a hundred and fifty eight of them, ate soup and talked about a lot of things, but we didn’t mention the people we made these for.

Darkness came early and swallowed the world whole. It was fitting, the lights would seem brighter under a dark sky. We walked to the Naka shrine, a holy place for the Uchiha. “There is a river that flows from here all the way to the sea. The river made from Sasunoõ’s tears,”

The Naka shrine was pristine, beautiful in a way all old monuments were, but it felt like ghosts kept a watchful eye on us. If I was less paranoid I’d have suspected them of knowing that I knew- but I hadn’t told anyone, ever.

Warm red wooden beams welcome us back to the holy site. We walked under the gate and I realized that the last time I was here I had been so occupied with sensei’s predicament, I hadn’t taken it all in. There was a wooden sign on the gate, upholding the Uchiha crest. Nine feet high spires guided a path to the place of worship. Each spire engraved with words like “Endure”, “Accept” and “Unity”.

Sasuke slowed his pace. “There’s fifty of them.Twenty five on each side of this path.” he let his hand rest on one, tracing the roughly carved words, he did it with such an ease it was as if he had done it a thousand times. “The fifty pillars of shinobi virtues.”

I wasn’t sure if Sasuke said it in disdain or if he saw the irony in it too, or maybe he meant it in an entirely different way. But the way he said it made the hairs on my arms stand up. A lot of good these virtues had done the Uchiha, right?

I read the one opposite of me. “Detachment.” And wasn’t that exactly the problem? Train children to detach themselves from the world around them, turn them into puppets controlled by scarred people looking to harm the ones that had harmed them, a never ending cycle that would repeat and repeat as the children would grow up to become the scarred puppeteers themselves.

“You want to do the ceremony here?” I asked suddenly unsure if this was actually a holy place or if it was brainwash HQ. No wonder Itachi did what he did if this was what he was taught and believed in.

Sasuke shook his head, “No, we’re going inside, the river is mostly underground.”

The shrine itself was mostly underground. There was the Tablet chamber, with the tablet that could activate the Mangekyou, but Sasuke placed his hand on the wall and it opened to reveal a huge hall, big enough to easily fit a small house. How had we not noticed earlier? It was quite dark, but a LED-seal from hammerspace quickly found its way in my hand.

Also, how cool was it that Sasuke had his very own hidden hide-out! There were so many seals I could create and test here without anyone ever being the wiser of it.  
The hall had three open rooms with embroidered carpets, depicting all kinds of events; I’m sure I saw one with a ninja standing on the head of the Kyuubi!

We walked to a fourth chamber which led to a steep downwards corridor. Rough cut out stone floors, but obviously flattened by the many people that had walked over it, so smooth. There were unlit torches hanging on the walls. The deeper we went the more moss there was in the crevices. How deep did this place go? We had been walking a good six minutes before I started to hear the sloshing sounds of water.

There was a sharp turn and suddenly the river was so loud I barely heard Sasuke. How was Sasuke going to release these tiny boats on this wild water? It crashed in on itself, the force behind the water probably matched some of the weaker water jutsu out there.

But Sasuke held his hand out, as if to say “just wait and see.” and low and behold, a minute turned to two, to five and suddenly the water slowed down.

“How.. did you do that?”

“Clan secret” a smug smirk on his lips.

He totally deserved the fist on his shoulder. It was the first time I forgot about the tension that had slowly been building in my stomach since the moment I entered the district.

We walked into the river, it was knee-deep. So, it was more a stream then a river then. I unsealed the lanterns one by one. And he through some elemental manipulation lit the candles on fire.

It was quiet as he watched each of them go deep into the cave, until the lights were no longer visible.

“Do you think they’re at peace?” I asked. It was an unfair question, because I didn’t think they were, murdered, however quickly or efficiently… It had still been gruesome. And I knew that after life, came another.

“That’s why we did this… So they could find their peace. Their place in heaven.” In the soft light of my LED seal it wasn’t hard to pretend it was Itachi instead of Sasuke. Did he think the same thing? Did he also light candles for the ones he had killed?

“You alright Shikako?” Sasuke asked, he had gotten closer and the resemblance to Itachi had dispersed like a bad genjutsu.

I nodded and said I was. I’d never tell him the truth. It was bad enough he had to hate his brother for his lies… Selfishly I couldn’t add to that.

We walked back, all the way up. It was quiet.

Until our paths split and Sasuke gave me the softest smile, one that actually reached his eyes and lit his face up. “Thanks, you know. For being here, being a friend. I know you get it. Not many people do.”

I smiled back just as earnestly, while it felt like the cold hand of betrayal and guilt clutched my heart so tight it skipped a beat. “Yeah, I guess I do. See you tomorrow!”

If I lingered on his leaving form a little too long, it was penance.

As I slept that night and closed my eyes... I realized; just like the Uchiha district I had high walls that kept my secrets and I played that night over and over and over again.

**Author's Note:**

> A big thank you to *REDACTED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE* for her BETA reading and amazingly photogenic doggo's.


End file.
